Life on Queen Street

I'm in Dublin, sitting on my bed, contemplating the vaguely penitential decor of my residence room and thinking that I've made a huge mistake...

Lady J told me that the first few days were going to suck and they do/it does. I'm lonely and nervous and feeling dislocated and undone. I'm also exhausted but I don't so much have jet lag as jet malaise: I feel like some languid fading French film star, reclining in her chair, a cigarette smoking fitfully between two long, attenuated fingers as she contemplates the remains of her days... Not literally obviously, but I think I can see the end of my tether from here and, as the end of all the running around trying to get myself organized and here nears (tomorrow - Registration!), the reality of what I've committed to is sinking in - and I think maybe I'm fucking insane.

Anyway, I'm here. I have stuff for my kitchen and the makings for toast and tea tomorrow morning (and M&S chocie biccies because there was a need for something familiar). My bed is made, there's a curtain in the shower (there wasn't this morning, so this is an awesome thing) and, although hot water appears to be something that happens elsewhere, I will be able to shower tomorrow and have a cup and some toast in my own (shared) kitchen before I head to school. There are worse things.

Also, Atonement will be showing at the cinema down the road, which has got to be a sign, right?

Speaking of - Keira Knightley wore a ripped bedsheet to the London premiere of Atonement and the Fug Girls are off at New York's Fashion Week, forcing me to imagine what Jessica and Heather would have to say about Knightley's decision to go out in public dressed like The Princess Bride meets The Mummy.

And really, my imagination fails: fashion is so not my bag - reading Vogue offends my socialist principles and brings me over all strident and didactic - and to critique something well (as opposed to merely criticizing) you need to love it, or at least the idea of it.

That said, although I look at that dress and cringe ever so slightly - that one-shouldered, Olympian goddess look is always hard to pull off even when the designer doesn't drink an entire bottle of Stoli after discovering her new husband cavorting with one of the male models from her spring show naked except for a kitchen apron, a choker and her favourite pair of Jimmy Choo's and go on a booze, diet-pills and rage-fuelled rampage through her studio, screaming 'how could you fuck him when Andre Leon Talley called me a "true original" when he saw my collection in Paris' while stabbing her dress-maker's dummy repeatedly in the chest with a pair of shears only to wake up hung-over and spent the next morning to realize that Knightley was due for her last fitting in 15 minutes, leaving her just enough time to cut away the worst of the rents and figure out that if she wrapped the tatters around Knightley's chest she could say that she was going for a 'Winged Victory meets Punk' and no one would ever have to know about Jonathan and Gaspard and the goat - I like Knightley's "fuck you and fuck off" attitude to the tabs who've made a small fortune the last year staking out her home with photographers and scrutinizing her appearance with much pharisaical hand-wringing and minatory prognostications about her health. I mean, if you know your appearance is gonna be raked over the coals no matter what you do, why not go all out, eh?

I just spent five minutes looking up "minatory" (going 'min, min, min... it means bad and vaugely hectoring... min, min, minimim, mina, miniature, miniatory, minatory! Oh, thank Christ'). I can't decide if this means I'm in the right place after all or merely that I'm a geek with a shoddy memory - or if those things are even mutually exclusive.

Things I've Learned About Ireland:

the phone cards are not actually cards... they're pieces of paper and you have to call one number, dial in your pin and then dial the number, if you can still remember who you wanted to call by that point

beer is surprisingly expensive and that seems wrong on so many levels (and apparently is, as I understand that the gov't is jacking up the prices to get people to drink less - because that's ever worked before)

they know not from KD (that's Kraft Dinner to you Europeans, Americans and other heathens), in fact, they know not from maccaroni! O_o o_O I have no idea what I'm going to eat for the next year

it's humid. I hate that